Tina Lawson defends daughter Beyoncé against ‘appropriation’ claims

Beyonce’s mother Tina Lawson had to get the haters right together this week over their criticism of Queen Bey’s new ‘Black Is King’ visual album. 

The project, released July 31 on the Disney+ streaming service, is based on the songs from the 2019 album, “The Lion King.” As reported by Variety, Bey’s latest work was announced in a joint statement from Disney and her Parkwood Entertainment production company.

“Black Is King is a celebratory memoir for the world on the Black experience,” the joint statement reads. The visuals will follow a new narrative based on a young king’s “transcendent journey through betrayal, love and self-identity.”

Immediately after the trailer dropped earlier this week, the singer was accused of “appropriating” African culture, even though the visual album is a celebration of the motherland, That Grape Juice reports. 

READ MORE: Mathew Knowles says colorism made him think ex-wife Tina Lawson was a white woman

The singer’s mother responded to the nonsensical chatter on Instagram, calling out folks for criticizing the film “before they even see it,” she wrote in a post on her official IG account. 

Ms. Tina also acknowledged some of the amazing African contributors on ‘Black Is King,’ while praising her daughter’s passion, dedication and unwavering work ethic. 

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#Repost @hova_bey.carter with @get_repost ・・・ Joshua and Blitz are Ghanaian, KC is Nigerian, Hannah worked on Lemonade with B, Trevor is South African…There's way, way more involved in the making of Black Is King but my point in posting this is simply that those who are criticizing the film (before they even see it) saying it's unauthentic, upset that B doesn't actually go to Africa or say that Bey is simply using African cultures for gain are wrong because 1. She makes less with her Afrocentric content. 2. She's actually taken the time studied African costumes and such and didn't just throw this together. She's worked with actual African dancers, film makers, directors etc on this project so for some African Americans and Africans to say it's a facade is truly discrediting the work of their own people. 3. While people whine about her not touring in Africa yet beg for more African representation in entertainment but are mad that they're getting it from one the world's greatest stars is strange to me. They'd rather have B come and they spend their money for a show once or twice every few years rather than have someone of African descent work with African creatives to create art that celebrates them that will last forever and it be done at no cost to them.) #Beyonce #Beyoncé #BeyonceKnowles #BeyonceKnowlesCarter #QueenB #MrsCarter #Jayz #jigga #jiggaman #Hov #Hova #KingHova #ShawnCarter #TheCarters #beyonceandjayz #Jayonce #MrCarter #JayZandBeyonce #beyhive #hovandb #JayandB #african #nigeria #blackexcellence #heritage #ghana #africa #director #

A post shared by Tina Knowles (@mstinalawson) on Jul 3, 2020 at 6:37pm PDT

Lawson noted that Beyonce made time to study African costumes and she specifically worked with African dancers, filmmakers and directors on this project.

She rejected accusations that Bey’s love of the culture is nothing more than a “façade” and that it’s really all about the money. 

When one fan pointed out that Beyonce’s “Lemonade” (considered her “Black” album) is one of her lowest selling offerings, Lawson co-signed the message. 

“It’s really sad that the women who shout the loudest the “protect the black woman” that they are the ones that are trying to tear her down” she wrote in the caption of the post.

“Sisters wake up!!!! Beyonce was taught from a little girl to lift other women up not to tear them down,” she added.

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@_alphaa_ (Twitter handle) you could not have said it better. It’s really sad that the women who shout the loudest “protect the black woman” that they are the ones that are trying to tear her down. Sisters wake up!!!! Beyonce was taught from a little girl to lift other women up not to tear them down. She minds her own business , does not criticize anyone, Gives of her time and money , and dedicates her art to Boldly show the Royalty and beauty of our heritage and journey ! Her work is to change the narrative! To show that we did not start off as slaves , but that we were kings and queens before we were forced into slavery . Don’t you want to see something that shows that ! Aren’t you sick and tired Of seeing us as slaves ! She employs African and African-American people , fights for many “first” in the fashion and film world . Take an inventory of yourself and your hate . Where is it coming from ? I ask you to examine your heart and really take a look at what your motive is and what it’s fueled by! Then take that energy critiquing, and tearing down and put it to into an action that is fighting against the systemic racism that is going on right now and has been going on forever . The time that you take to tear her down you could be using that time to do that!! Critique and tear down the systems that hurt and suppress us. Use your social media platform to work on getting people out to vote to change the laws critique the frigging laws!! Stop being a social media terrorist to the wrong people ! Redirect that passion for change in that !!! Use your energy and great intelligence to fight people who choose to be oppressors. Beyonce is not your enemy!! But you would swear that she was! I love what this post said which is the honest to God truth. She sold more records before lemonade. I have one question for you too that I’m confused about “how do you appropriate the black culture when you are black?? “She has a right to her heritage as well as anyone else in the world. Just consider young sisters i love you and brothers thankyou for your balance and speaking up.

A post shared by Tina Knowles (@mstinalawson) on Jul 3, 2020 at 11:09am PDT

 

Lawson went on to admit that she finds it “strange” how “people whine about her not touring in Africa yet beg for more African representation in entertainment but are mad that they’re getting it from one the world’s greatest stars.”

She said her daughter’s so-called fans would “rather have B come and they spend their money for a show once or twice every few years rather than have someone of African descent work with African creatives to create art that celebrates them that will last forever and it be done at no cost to them,” Lawson wrote.

She went on to urge the trolls to “sop being a social media terrorist to the wrong people.”

“Redirect that passion,” Lawson added. “Use your energy and great intelligence to fight people who choose to be oppressors.”

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The post Tina Lawson defends daughter Beyoncé against ‘appropriation’ claims appeared first on TheGrio.

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Kellyanne Conway’s anti-Trump teen daughter claims she’s being silenced

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway had an awkward moment on TikTok with her teen daughter over freedom of speech.

Claudia Conway, 15, made headlines this week after she shared her political views with the world through a series of TikTok videos, Complex reports. 

While her mother is very much pro-Trump, and her father is anti-Trump conservative, George Conway, the high schooler is a liberal activist and supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The Conways, understandably, are not pleased with the media attention that their teen daughter is getting over her stance on certain social issues. The minor and her mother recently sparred on TikTok, with Kellyanne demanding that she end the stream but Claudia refuses.

READ MORE: Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley tells Kellyanne Conway ‘Keep my name out of your lying mouth’ for a very good reason

“You’re literally not letting me use my freedom of speech,” she tells her mom, who appears to keep calm as she insists Claudia “shut it all down,” because “not everyone’s following is well-meaning.”

Watch the moment go down via the YouTube clip below:

George, meanwhile, has demanded all journalists cease communication with the minor. 

Taking to Twitter on Friday (July 3), he wrote, “ “To journalists:  @kellyannepolls and I do *not* consent to any communications between you and any of our minor children, including our daughter Claudia.  So desist.”

The teen claims her parents are trying to silence her by shutting off her phone and pressuring her to delete her social media accounts. 

“Please stop supporting my dad because he’s trying to take down my social media accounts too,” she said during the live stream with her famous mother.  

To journalists: @kellyannepolls and I do *not* consent to any communications between you and any of our minor children, including our daughter Claudia. So desist.

Thank you.

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) July 3, 2020

Claudia claims she has “been bullied and badgered her entire life because of her parents,” so she’s now using her platform to speak her truth. 

“I grew up in a very, very conservative family, so I was only exposed to those views for a very long time. I decided to educate myself and think for myself,” Claudia told Insider 

“I’m still a kid, of course. I took the time to educate myself and took the time to branch out and be exposed to other sides and other biases and whatnot. We do get into arguments a lot — I’m not going to lie.”

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U.S. reports nationwide coronavirus case record heading into July 4

The United States reported a daily record in new coronavirus cases on Friday, with roughly 55,000 people confirmed to have been infected with the virus ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend, according to a Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.

More than a dozen states, including Florida, California, Texas and Arizona, broke single-day records in new coronavirus cases this week. Those four states accounted for just under half of all new coronavirus cases reported Thursday, but most states are seeing infections climb.

The U.S. leads the world in confirmed infections and deaths, exceeding 50,000 new cases for the first time on Wednesday. Nearly 130,000 people have died in the U.S. since its first confirmed coronavirus case in January, and nearly 2.8 million people have been infected.

Health experts worry the traditional July 4 barbecues and fireworks displays will cause infections to further spike. Many states have halted plans to reopen restaurants and other businesses this week. Some states, including Texas and California, reimposed restrictions that had already been rolled back, shuttering bars and limiting seating in restaurants that had just reopened after months-long closures.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday issued a state-wide executive order requiring masks to be worn in public spaces after long resisting the measure.

Despite the coronavirus surge, President Donald Trump's outlook on the pandemic appears to remain rosy. Just a day after assuring Americans the White House is getting the pandemic "under control," the president touched down in South Dakota to give a speech at a July 4 event at Mount Rushmore, which expected to draw roughly 7,500 people. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said event attendees would not be required to wear masks or socially distance.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said earlier this week he would "not be surprised" if the U.S. began to see 100,000 new cases per day if current trends continue.

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What tech companies know about your kids | Veronica Barassi
Visit http://TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more. The digital platforms you and your family use every day -- from online games to education apps and medical portals -- may be collecting and selling your children's data, says anthropologist Veronica Barassi. Sharing her eye-opening research, Barassi urges parents to look twice at digital terms and conditions instead of blindly accepting them -- and to demand protections that ensure their kids' data doesn't skew their future. The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), submit a Media Request here: https://ift.tt/2pW6pTn Follow TED on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TEDTalks Like TED on Facebook: http://facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: http://youtube.com/TED

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How The Baby-Sitters Club raised a generation

Left to right, Shay Rudolph, Momona Tamada, Malia Baker, and Sophie Grace as the Baby-Sitters Club. | Netflix

The 213-volume series was built on the pleasures of repetition. Netflix’s new TV series will continue its legacy.

I was raised by the Baby-Sitters Club. And if you were a girl growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, you probably were too.

The Baby-Sitters Club, Ann M. Martin’s book series about a group of middle-school girls who leverage their child care capabilities into their own small business, was foundational for a generation. From 1986 to 2000, Martin and a small army of ghostwriters wrote 213 volumes (131 in the main series and the other 82 in spinoffs), with 176 million copies printed.

Ostensibly the books were for kids ages 9 to 12, but I read them when I was much younger, and so did most of my friends. Young children are voracious consumers, and for much of the series run, the Baby-Sitters industrial complex was putting out one book every month. They were like comic books, only about children taking care of younger children instead of fighting supervillains. (They did occasionally solve mysteries, though; mostly in the Mysteries and Super Mysteries spinoff series.)

And now, a new generation is meeting the babysitters. On July 3, Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club premieres. It’s a triumph of a TV show, faithful to the books in characters and spirit and style, but updated for a new generation. The new babysitters have smartphones (but still use a retro landline for official club business), and a social media campaign (but they still hand out flyers to better access their target clientele of worried parents). But what’s best about Netflix’s version of The Baby-Sitters Club is that it breathes out the old-fashioned warmth and charm the books had at their very best.

That charm wasn’t necessary for a faithful adaptation; the Baby-Sitters Club books were often not at their very best, and generally were not particularly charming or particularly warm. They were churned out in a factory, and it showed.

But the books didn’t actually need to be warm and charming or objectively well-written to do their job. That’s not why they existed. That’s not why they were beloved by a generation. They existed to give their young readers a safe, secure, and unchanging space. And to do as much, they needed to be just a little bit terrible.

In early volumes, Kristy Thomas is as compelling and complex as Ramona Quimby. That complexity fades rapidly, and that’s okay.

Kailey Schwerman/Netflix

Early Kristy is the kind of brash and bold little girl children’s literature can’t get enough of. Here, she’s played by Sophie Grace.

The saga of the babysitters begins with 1986’s Kristy’s Great Idea, in which 12-year-old Kristy — the bossiest of the babysitters and hence their de facto leader — is inspired to begin the club after witnessing her mother struggle to find a sitter on short notice. Taking note of the number of hassled commuter parents in their small middle-class town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, Kristy recruits her best friends Mary Anne and Claudia, plus the cool new girl Stacey. The goal is to create a club so that busy parents only have to call one number to reach a whole passel of responsible, experienced babysitters. Before long, the girls have a business plan and a loyal clientele, and soon they’re raking in the money.

Kristy’s Great Idea is actually a good book, by which I mean that you can read it as an adult and enjoy yourself. Kristy, who builds her first small business at the age of 12 and is completely successful at it, is one of those brash and bold little girls that children’s literature is full of, a close cousin of both Ramona Quimby and Harriet the spy. And she’s a natural story engine: She’s so brimming with ambition and plans that you can’t help but like her, but she’s so abrasive and bossy to her friends that you can’t blame them when tension arises within the group that will need to be sorted out.

It’s immensely pleasurable to watch Kristy’s determination and drive push her into a bad situation, and then to watch her use that same determination and drive — and the power of friendship! — to make her way out of it.

And the interpersonal tensions between the girls are, at these early stages, beautifully drawn. Kristy and Mary Anne are both plainly still kids, and while they’re responsible enough to take care of smaller children, by and large they dress and behave like kids. Claudia and Stacey, meanwhile, are aspiring toward teendom. They’ve developed new fascinations with clothes and makeup and boys. Kristy and Mary Anne feel left behind and rejected; Claudia and Stacey feel awkward and uncomfortable about hanging out with girls less cool than they are. They all care about each other and enjoy each other’s company regardless. It’s the kind of friend group fracture that emerges all the time around age 12, and reading along as the babysitters navigate it is wildly compelling.

But there’s a steep downhill drop in quality after that first book, perhaps because Martin began releasing new volumes with increasing speed. And after the first 35 novels, when Martin took a step back and the ghostwriters arrived, the quality of the books rapidly deteriorated. They lost their specificity of voice and the distinctive energy that drove Kristy’s Great Idea forward.

Plot developments stopped mattering from one book to another. Under Martin’s auspices the girls aged from 12 to 13 and moved forward from the seventh to the eighth grade, but as ghostwriters took over, the members of the Baby-Sitters Club became stuck in time and stopped progressing. However many summertime beach vacations they would serve as mother’s helpers on, when school came back in the fall, they would always find themselves starting eighth grade all over again. (Except Claudia, who got moved back a year after she found out she was dyslexic.)

But these quality considerations don’t matter so much when you’re a small child plowing your way through the series, not when you have the pleasures of formula to look forward to. Children love repetition, and the Baby-Sitters Club books repeat exquisitely.

The Baby-Sitters Club books were built on formula. That’s what made them fun to read.

Kailey Schwerman/Netflix

Left to right, Shay Rudolph, Momona Tamada, Sophie Grace, and Malia Baker. Note the killer pattern combination on Claudia (Tamada).

The formula of each Baby-Sitters Club book is simple. And all 131 volumes of the central series repeated it exactly.

In chapter one, we meet our narrator for the book. (Each book is narrated by a different babysitter in the first person.) She describes her own appearance and personality, and then she lays out her central conflict for the book: Perhaps Stacey is too interested in boys and is losing track of what really matters, or Claudia is having a hard time focusing on her schoolwork when she’s so much more invested in her art and her babysitting.

In chapter two, the narrator attends a Baby-Sitters Club meeting in Claudia’s bedroom, because Claudia has her own telephone line and also is prone to stashing junk food in secret hiding places. There the narrator looks around at her friends, and one by one she describes their clothing, their two central personality traits, and where they fit in the club’s interpersonal network.

Always this section will include a lengthy description of Claudia’s truly astonishing wardrobe, because Claudia’s defining personality trait is that she is artistic and loves clothes. Her outfit descriptions are always the most playful and creative passages of each book, which is probably why they have become the most enduring legacy of the series and there are multiple blogs and Instagrams devoted to Claudia’s sense of fashion. Personally, I will never forget the time she decided to dress up as Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus to go to school because she had a big science test coming up and she thought dressing as Ms. Frizzle would inspire her.

I am reading Kristy’s Great Idea to prep for the new Netflix Baby-Sitter’s Club and can we all take a second to appreciate the very first Claudia Kishi outfit? Truly a legend pic.twitter.com/1k8scCEsOp

— Constance Grady (@constancegrady) June 28, 2020

From there, the book proceeds through a few episodic babysitting jobs, while the current narrator handles her own interpersonal and/or family issues. By the end of the book, the whole thing will have been resolved, with the help and unfailing support of the Baby-Sitters Club.

For a child reader, this repeated formula is the next best thing to hearing your favorite song on a loop until you’re so tired of it that it’s physically painful to hear it again. There’s a sense of deep comfort, an almost voluptuous feeling of security, that comes in knowing exactly what will happen from one book to the next. It’s pleasurable in the same way that having old episodes of Friends on in the background is pleasurable. You’re hanging out with your friends, watching them do exactly the same thing they always do. How wonderful.

And you also have the pleasure of self-identification. Each babysitter has approximately two personality traits, which is exactly as many as you need to figure out which one you identify with most, like a proto-Sex and the City sorting: Kristy is bossy and tomboyish, while Stacey is a trendy New Yorker and also diabetic. I myself (bookish and shy) figured myself for a Mary Anne as soon as I cracked open my first book. But when Martin promoted 11-year-old Mallory Pike, who is also bookish and shy, into the ranks of the club, I had a minor existential crisis. Which one was I? As an adult, I can see that both Mary Anne and Mallory are the weakest characters in the series, but, ah, I was young.

The Baby-Sitters Club taught a generation of kids how to be human beings. There are pluses and minuses to that.

Kailey Schwerman/Netflix

Netflix’s updated Dawn might not change herself for a boy, but she definitely still drinks green juice. Here, she’s played by Xochitl Gomez.

One of the reasons The Baby-Sitters Club is so precious to so many people is that we read the book series when we were very young children, and it became our guide to developing into fully socialized human beings. The Baby-Sitters Club taught us to dream big, to work hard, to fulfill our responsibilities, and to support our friends. And it taught us less wholesome things, too.

I learned about femininity from The Baby-Sitters Club. Specifically, I learned one of the rules of femininity of the ’90s: You had to be beautiful, but it was not cool to be someone who cared about beauty. You had to look perfect, but you should never ever put in any work to get there.

That message was embedded in a fair amount of pop culture of the ’90s. The 1999 movie 10 Things I Hate About You pointedly showed us Julia Stiles’s Kat washing her face in a contrast to her sister Bianca’s primping and preening, with the implication being that cool girls didn’t obsess over their grooming like Bianca did. They washed their faces and called it a day. But you can only really get away with that attitude if you look like young Julia Stiles did in 10 Things I Hate About You, and in real life, that’s a look that takes some grooming.

Volume 50 of The Baby-Sitters Club, which came out in 1992, is called Dawn’s Big Date. It features Dawn, who joined the Baby-Sitters Club in book 5 (personality traits: from California, hippie), giving herself a makeover so that she can attract a boy she likes. She also revamps her personality so that she’ll seem more cool, acting dumb in math class because she thinks cool kids don’t do well in school. The other babysitters are appalled and outraged at her behavior, and in the end, it turns out that Dawn didn’t need to do any of the things she did because the boy liked her just the way she was. So Dawn ditches her makeup and curlers and reverts back to her old smart and responsible hippie self.

The ostensible message of the story is that you should always be true to yourself, you should never sell yourself short for a boy, and if he’s worth your time he’ll like you just the way you are. But when I read it as a 7- or 8-year-old girl, I remember feeling a vicious contempt for Dawn, a contempt so ferocious it slanted toward hatred. How dare she not know the rules of the story in which she was living? How dare she want something so much that she tried to bend the fabric of reality around it, when everyone knows girls shouldn’t express a desire for anything? How dare she put any work at all into her appearance, especially when — as the cover art for Dawn’s Big Date clearly showed me — she already looked perfect?

I thought it was good and right that Dawn should be punished for her sins through the disapproval of her friends. I found it cathartic. And I knew, although I could never have put it into words at the time, that what she was being punished for wasn’t rejecting her true self. It was that she had let everyone see her put in the work toward building the self she wanted.

The Baby-Sitters Club continued for so long you had time to get sick of it. That’s kind of beautiful.

Marianne Barcellona/LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images

Ann M. Martin surrounded by her official fan club at PS 2 in Chinatown in New York City.

The Baby-Sitters Club is the first cultural work to which I can remember having an aesthetic reaction. By this I mean that the first book to ever prompt in me the thought, “Huh, I don’t think this is very good, and I’m pretty sure the fault lies in it and not with me,” was a Baby-Sitters Club book.

Which volume it was, exactly, is lost to the mists of time, but it must certainly have been in the upper reaches of the central series, around the ’80s or ’90s. I stuck with The Baby-Sitters Club regardless into the 100s out of a sense of duty and a completist ethic, but around volume 109 (1997’s Mary Anne to the Rescue — it was one of the one’s about Mary Anne’s boyfriend Logan, and I could never take Logan books), I was overcome with a sense of despair.

I could not, I absolutely would not, keep reading, no matter how long Martin wanted to extend the series. I could not bear to do it. I had listened to the song so many times in a row that just hearing it caused me pain.

Today, more than 20 years later, I think there’s something a bit beautiful about getting to reach that point in a series, the point where you stop reading not because there’s nothing left to read but because you have satiated yourself. Because The Baby-Sitters Club was that rare creature: a series that went on so long that you could outgrow it in real time. It is foundational, and part of what makes it so foundational is that you can depend on it enough to feel secure when you leave it.

Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club is by and large better crafted than the books were. It doesn’t feel as though it’s being churned out by an assembly line on that bruising one-book-a-month pace. It feels as though it’s been crafted by a team who cares about quality.

It also feels like a show aimed at both nostalgic millennials and their young children. And because it is a show that young children are going to watch, it is also undoubtedly going to be a show from which younger viewers pick up confused and mangled lessons that no one quite realizes the show is teaching them.

The test of whether the TV show will be as enduring and foundational as its source material is not just whether or not it is well-crafted television. It’s whether or not it will grow into such an institution that the children who watch it now will be able to walk away from it when they’re finished with it, secure in the knowledge that it will always be there, as stable and unchanging as that chapter two formula.

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